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Jun 23, 2011

The latest analyses from public radio's Grow the Audience project examine the performance of public radio news stations, revealing two top predictors of these stations' ability to attract sizable audience shares within their markets: the percentage of core listeners in their listenership and the educational level of the market. The new studies, co-authored by Station Resource Group and Walrus Research, also focus on the relationship between audience and listener support and the size of local news staffs.

WYES in New Orleans finally broke ground for a new headquarters Wednesday (June 22), nearly 20 years after General Manager Randy Feldman had first hoped to do so. "WYES staffers aren’t likely to miss the old building, an unheated cave with shaky air conditioning and lots of exposed wiring," the Times-Picayune notes. Phase one is a new 20,000-square-foot, $7 million new building right behind the old; that should be done by March 2012. Phase two, to raze the original building, doesn't yet have a start date.

The former NPR chief reflects on her two years at the helm of public radio's top news organization, including the stormy final months of her presidency, in the latest edition of American Journalism Review.

Leading NPR through the political crises that began with the Juan Williams dismissal strengthened her as a chief executive, Schiller says: "You develop a certain toughness and clarity of thinking about what matters and what is just a lot of noise. It would have been easy for me to get distracted, but too many people were depending on me for leadership. And so I discovered a strength I didn't even know I had."

"I made a few mistakes back in October, which I've publicly acknowledged many times," she says. "But beyond that, I'm proud of what my colleagues and I accomplished while I was with NPR. There's not much I would change."

Schiller signs on as chief digital officer of NBC News next month. "My background is in television news, so in many ways I feel like I'm coming home," she says.